County annual report · FIPS 37135
2021 Orange County, NC Power Outage Report
In 2021, customers in Orange County, NC went without power for an average of 10.8 hours, a total of 207K customer-hours (North Carolina average 10.3 hours). That ranks 33rd worst of 94 North Carolina counties and 732nd of 2,974 nationally.
Compared with NC, the US and 2020
Coverage line is EAGLE-I's share of North Carolina customers tracked each year.
Biggest outages in Orange County, 2021
The 10 outage episodes with the most customers out at once. Times are UTC.
| # | Started (UTC) | Ended (UTC) | Duration | Peak out | Customer-hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | July 4, 2021 18:15 | July 5, 2021 05:00 | 10h 45m | 4,953 | 14K |
| 2 | August 14, 2021 20:30 | August 15, 2021 15:45 | 19h 15m | 4,410 | 15K |
| 3 | May 7, 2021 16:30 | May 8, 2021 02:45 | 10h 15m | 4,133 | 20K |
| 4 | December 7, 2021 03:45 | December 7, 2021 06:00 | 2h 15m | 3,607 | 5,523 |
| 5 | January 13, 2021 11:30 | January 13, 2021 15:00 | 3h 30m | 2,784 | 5,479 |
| 6 | September 3, 2021 17:45 | September 4, 2021 00:45 | 7h | 2,768 | 4,154 |
| 7 | November 17, 2021 19:45 | November 17, 2021 22:00 | 2h 15m | 2,411 | 2,413 |
| 8 | July 12, 2021 03:45 | July 12, 2021 19:15 | 15h 30m | 2,121 | 6,914 |
| 9 | January 31, 2021 13:45 | January 31, 2021 21:45 | 8h | 2,028 | 6,035 |
| 10 | April 9, 2021 10:30 | April 9, 2021 20:00 | 9h 30m | 2,020 | 1,035 |
Outage episodes by size in 2021: 86 reached 100+ customers, 27 reached 1,000+ customers, 0 reached 10,000+ customers.
Utility reliability filed with the EIA
SAIDI (average outage time per customer) and SAIFI (average interruptions per customer) that utilities serving Orange County reported on EIA Form 861 for 2021, or their most recent earlier filing. Utility-wide figures, not county-specific.
| Utility | EIA year | SAIDI | SAIFI | SAIDI excl. major events | SAIFI excl. major events |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duke Energy Progress - (NC) | 2021 | 3.1 hrs | 1.39 | 2.4 hrs | 1.34 |
| Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC | 2021 | 3.5 hrs | 1.20 | 2.5 hrs | 1.10 |
| Piedmont Electric Member Corp | 2021 | 10.5 hrs | 1.66 | 2.0 hrs | 1.03 |
| Duke Energy | - | - | - | - | - |
About this data
- Outage figures come from DOE/ORNL EAGLE-I, which records customers out by county every 15 minutes. EAGLE-I tracked about 92% of North Carolina's customers in 2021; utilities it does not see are not counted.
- Hours per customer = outage customer-minutes ÷ 19,163 customers (ORNL modeled county customer count), including major storm days. It is comparable across counties but is not the SAIDI a utility files.
- An outage event is a continuous stretch with customers out; counts at 100, 1,000 and 10,000+ use its peak.
- Years loaded: 2015–2025. Orange County has data for 2015–2025.
Cite this report
MassOutage (massoutage.com), Orange County, NC annual power outage report, 2021, data as of Oct 3, 2026 02:41 UTC, sources: DOE EAGLE-I (https://eagle-i.doe.gov/); EAGLE-I modeled customer counts (MCC) (https://figshare.com/); EIA Form 861 (utility reliability) (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/). https://massoutage.com/reports/2021/north-carolina/orange-county